Successful Start For The Coding Club

The Coding Club had its first event over the weekend, and came home from Fontbonne University's GriffinHack event with a 3rd Place finish and $200 prize.

Freshmen Ian Crossey, Luke Parent and Alex Wasinger attended the event, where they were assigned to help the St. Louis Area Foodbank develop a system to help get food and people to the same places. Their solution was an app called Füder, which incentivized volunteering with a point system and social integration. "You'd sign up to volunteer, then you could add friends and encourage each other to complete tasks," Ian explained. "Then for volunteering to do things like picking up cans, you'd get volunteer points." The app would help people find Food Bank distribution centers in areas that have been categorized as food deserts, and would have an Uber-like feature that would facilitate volunteers to shuttle those in need to the centers.

Ian said the club hopes their initial success will lead to an increase in membership, especially with upcoming competitions such as one at the end of April at the Science Center, and opportunities on the horizon like the GlobalHack summer camp and Youth Coding League.